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This week,
Conspiracy Journal
takes a look at such neck-snapping stories as:

-Midnight
At the Oasis: Confronting The Unknown In The Desert
Wastes - Top
Secret Stealth Helicopters Used in Bin Laden Raid-- Creatures of the Crop-- Deadly Weather in U.S. Could Become
the Norm -AND: Strange Encounters with
Winged Creatures

All these exciting stories and MORE
in this week's issue of CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!
~ And Now, On With The Show! ~

FROM THE CONSPIRACY JOURNAL BOOKSHOP

Secrets of Death Valley - Mysteries and
Haunts
of the Mojave Desert

Join Tim Beckley (Mr. UFO) and
his crew for the ULTIMATE road
trip and help solve the riddles of California's Mojave and Death Valley.

Here are chilling Tales Of Abandoned Mines, Mysterious Creatures,
Deranged Killers, Hauntings, Eerie Spook Lights, Space Ships From
Far Away Worlds, Phantom Stagecoaches As Well As All Manner of Urban
Legends To Make You Twisted And Grow Pale In The Moonlight

* Witness The Landing Of A UFO
At Edwards Air Force Base Verified By An American Astronaut.

* Be Petrified Of The 12 Foot Levitating Clown And Find Some Gold
Thanks to The Teleporting Leprechaun.

* Attend Mae West’s First Séance.

* Journey With The Creepy Charles Manson And His Crew Down A Mysterious
Hole To Find The Hollow Earth.

* Hunt For Ghosts In The Death Valley Opera House.

* Keep Your Distance From The Albino Bigfoot Running Loose.

* Unravel The Puzzle Of The Lost Viking Ships Of The Desert.

SECRETS OF DEATH VALLEY
– MYSTERIES AND HAUNTS OF THE MOJAVE DESERT is a delightful,
easy to read journey for the armchair paranormal sightseer or those
looking to get out on the road.

This
book also includes the full text of George Van Tassel's rare book: "I Rode In A Flying Saucer"

If you order right now you will
also receive the FREE DVD "Diane
Tessman's Mystic of the Desert."

ALL OF THIS FOR THE SPECIAL
PRICE
OF
ONLY
$20.00(Plus $5.00 for
shipping.) You can't find this special price
anywhere else.

You can also phone in your
credit card orders to Global Communications
24-hour hotline: 732-602-3407

And as always you can send a
check or money order to:

Global Communications
P.O. Box 753
New
Brunswick, NJ 08903

- IN THE DESERT NO ONE CAN HEAR
YOU SCREAM DEPARTMENT -

Midnight At the Oasis: Confronting The Unknown In The Desert
Wastes
By Sean Casteel

New Book, Secrets of Death
Valley - Mysteries And Haunts Of The Mojave Desert offers the
roadway adventurer a whole new world to explore.

The Mojave Desert region of California is a magnet for the strange. In
such an inhospitable location, at least for humankind, there
nevertheless flourishes a great many UFOs, ghosts and other paranormal
manifestations of the unknown that make their presence felt there in no
uncertain terms.

Why is there so much interest on the part of otherworldly denizens of
the proverbial Twilight Zone? Tim Beckley of Global Communications has
recently assembled and released a book called "Secrets of Death Valley
- Mysteries and Haunts of the Mojave Desert" that tries to answer that
question.

The highly skilled contributors include New Age Channeler Diane
Tessman, UFO researcher Regan Lee, fringe topic author Adam Gorightly,
as well as Paul Dale Roberts, Joe Parzanese, and a character called
Cactus Jim. The lineup is, all in all, an excellent cross-section of
experiencers and investigators who work to make the mysteries of the
desert a little more accessible.

Regan Lee, for example, writes about the desert as a staging ground for
numerous phenomena. "The desert has been the stage," she writes, "for
otherworldly encounters with Jinns, Space Visitors, Mary, religious
deities and entities." Lee goes on to say that contactee Dana Howard,
who met the alien entity Diane there in the Yucca Valley, was no
exception to that idea. Diane unequivocally states, "From the desert
sands, cauldrons of magic will spring."

It is in that same section of desert that the famous Giant Rock is
located, as well as the domed device called the Integratron, a creation
of early contactee George Van Tassel. Van Tassel is a major story
himself, being one of the first to write about his encounters with
alien beings in the early 1950s. Along with the perhaps better known
George Adamski, he helped to create much of what we take for granted
nowadays about Ufology and other New Age articles of faith.

Beckley has done another of his rescue jobs on the early contactee
literature, this time resurrecting a history of Giant Rock written by
Van Tassel that has the makings of a great movie. It started with a
chance meeting with a traveler named Frank Critzer, who brought his car
in for repairs to the auto shop run by Van Tassel's uncle in 1930s
Santa Monica, California. Van Tassel and his uncle quickly made friends
with Critzer, even allowing him to sleep in their garage and repairing
his car for free. When Critzer, an experienced prospector, moved on, he
promised to write from wherever he settled down. He left with a $30
gift from Van Tassel and his uncle, a lot of money in those dark days
of the Great Depression.

It wasn't until a year later that Critzer was heard from. He sent a map
showing how to get to Giant Rock, and the following weekend Van Tassel
and his uncle made the trip to see him there. Critzer had made a home
for himself by digging out a space under Giant Rock that was
surprisingly livable and at least rent free.

One needs to realize that Giant Rock covers 5800 square feet and is
seven stories high. It is believed to be the largest boulder in the
world, and no one can explain how it got to its location so far from
any likely point of origin. Critzer's living area was about 400 square
feet, a small fraction of the bottom side of Giant Rock.

All was not well for Critzer however. In 1942, when the U.S. was at war
with Germany, Critzer was falsely accused of stealing dynamite and
failing to register for the draft. He also drew the suspicions of his
neighbors, who felt his German name gave away the fact that he was a
Nazi spy. Critzer had indeed served in the German Navy many years
before, but he had also served in America's Merchant Marines and was a
naturalized citizen of the U.S.

Still, deputies from Riverside County came to interrogate him, which is
odd, because Giant Rock is actually in San Bernardino County so the
Riverside boys had no jurisdiction there, which Critzer pointed out.
Critzer agreed to go with them anyway, and said he wanted to get his
coat first. He went into his living quarters to retrieve it, but the
deputies mistakenly thought he was defying them. They lobbed a tear gas
grenade through the north side window, which set off some dynamite that
Critzer kept for his prospecting work. Critzer died in the explosion
and the deputies were injured.

Van Tassel came to visit Giant Rock in the aftermath of Critzer's
death, and he and his family grew to love the place. After the war
ended, Van Tassel bought the land from the Bureau of Land Management
and built a small airport there. In 1953, Van Tassel began to hold
weekly meetings under Giant Rock, which eventually led to his long
series of UFO contacts there and to his creation of the Integratron, a
device he built on instructions from the aliens that was believed to
have regenerative health benefits for humans as well as to make travel
in time possible.

Van Tassel's history of Giant Rock is followed by the Global
Communications reprint of Van Tassel's contactee classic, "I Rode A
Flying Saucer." After explaining a little about his own realization
that his story was admittedly hard to believe, he next goes on to wax
mystical and poetic about the nature of God as creator of the universe,
a creator whose work extends far beyond merely earthly mankind.

From the sublimely innocent contactees, such as George Van Tassel and
Dana Howard, the picture darkens to a shadow of hell with the
appearance of Charles Manson and his demonically-inspired madness.
Writer Adam Gorightly contributes a chapter that traces the history of
Manson's time in the Death Valley region. One of Manson's followers
told him about an abandoned mining claim called Myers Ranch, which was
one of several desert outposts Manson would lead his followers to in
his efforts to conceal himself and his "family" from the imagined
horrors of "Helter Skelter," his Beatles-inspired term for the
apocalypse.

Manson spent hundreds of dollars on topographic maps of the area to
plan an escape route for himself and his cult. The flames of his
paranoia were further fanned by his twisted interpretation of the Book
of Revelation with the Beatles' White Album thrown into the mix. He
believed the Fab Four were in reality angels sent to destroy a third
part of mankind and that a total upheaval of the social order was just
around the corner.

Manson also believed there was a magic hole located in the desert,
spoken of in Hopi legend, which would shelter his group
during the apocalypse and permit them to return to the surface once the
strife was over. A pit of water called "Devil's Hole," found near the
northwest corner of Death Valley, was one possible location of the
supernatural escape route. Manson would meditate in front of the hole
for days at a time, until it dawned on him that the water in the hole
was a door, or a blocking mechanism, that prevented entrance into the
underworld. All he needed to do was to somehow suck the water out and
the secret passageway would be revealed.

But sorry, Charlie. On the night of October 12, 1969, a contingent of
Inyo County sheriff's officers, National Park Rangers and California
Highway Patrolmen raided the Manson Family headquarters and took the
entire group into custody for the Tate-LaBianca murders.

"Mysteries and Haunts of the Mojave Desert - Secrets of Death Valley"
moves on to relate a series of ghost stories and legends that have been
handed down through the years, such as the tale of the Serpent-Necked
"Canoa," which is Native-American speak for "Canoe." The storyteller, a
Santa Rosa Indian, described a boat with a long neck and the head of a
beast that turns out to be a Viking ship, with serpent heads at both
the bow and the stern, as pictured in the book. The Indian says that
seeing the ship was a bad sign, and that to save himself he had needed
to leave the area immediately.

Ed Stevens, the writer relaying the Indian's tale, argues for the
plausibility of a ship venturing into the area in late spring, when the
Colorado River would be flooded and other water-related factors would
come into play. But given that the Indian saw a Viking ship, from
centuries before, he was most likely experiencing a form of
"retro-cognition," which can loosely be defined as crossing over into
the past in an almost physical sense, seeing some scene from antiquity,
and then returning to the present. The phenomenon has been reported on
numerous occasions and is not as rare as some might think.

There are other chapters of a similar nature, with intriguing titles
like "Butcher-Knife Ike and the Lost Ship" and "The Lost Spanish
Galleon." Beckley also reprints newspaper articles dating back to the
19th century that report on odd occurrences there in the desert, such
as one about a group of explorers who discovered yet another ship said
to have been lost there many years before.

Another chapter, taken from a 1947 article in the San Diego Union,
claims that the skeletal remains of several human beings eight to nine
feet in height were discovered in the desert near the
Arizona-Nevada-California borderline. The giant skeletons were found
clothed in garments consisting of a medium-length jacket and trousers
that extended to slightly below the knees. The material was similar to
gray dyed sheepskin, but "obviously it was taken from an animal unknown
today." The section also includes reporting on the same find from other
newspapers at the time, providing a thorough cross section of media
coverage of an extremely bizarre and grisly discovery.

Not to be outdone, Tim Beckley himself authors a series of chapters on
some high strangeness in the forbidding desert region. For instance,
there is his report on a Bigfoot-type creature often sighted near such
desert towns as Twenty Nine Palms and Joshua Tree. Even more remarkable
is the fact that Bigfoot has been seen frequently in the area around
Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert just north of Lancaster.
The presence of Bigfoot became a running joke among the military
personnel stationed there, which some at the base connected to the
frequent visits made by UFOs to the installation. The Bigfoot/UFO
connection has been reported for decades in many other parts of the
world as well, and one can only wonder about the relationship the two
phenomena apparently have with one another.

Beckley also talks about some ghostly manifestations in a Death Valley
hotel and opera house located in a small town called Amargosa, noting
that it was not the sort of situation he expected to encounter on his
trips to the area. Amargosa was once the location of a borax mine, and
was essentially built to be a company town.

"The Amargosa Hotel and Opera House," Beckley explained, "was
originally put up for the borax miners and their families, who hadn't
much to do in the 1920s. It laid abandoned for years until a woman
named Marta Becket arrived from New York and cleaned up the place."
Becket was an accomplished actress, dancer, choreographer and painter.
After restoring the Opera House in the 1960s, she began to give
one-woman performances there, often without an audience. A lot of
paranormal activity has been reported there in the intervening years.
"We drew upon the research," Beckley said, "of Layla Halfhill of the
Los Angeles Paranormal Association. Her group scoped out the place
really well and noted some abnormalities of a parapsychological nature."

The book contains a haunting photo of an orb taken by the Los Angeles
Paranormal Association, who maintain that the Amargosa Hotel and Opera
House holds deep mysteries that need further investigation.

Add to that a chapter by Beckley on celebrities who had supernatural
encounters in the desert, to include Sammy Davis, Jr., jazz drummer
Buddy Rich, and actors William Shatner and Michael Boatman. Beckley
also includes a number of other desert anomalies that have become part
of the urban legends of the Mojave, such as a twelve-foot-tall
levitating clown who is seen to wander down the middle of the road
around midnight; a teleporting leprechaun that might direct a worthy
party to gold; the repeated apparition of a stagecoach from over a
century ago; and a singer who had an "in-your-nose" confrontation with
a small orb-like UFO.

In addition, the book is filled with numerous photos, some old and some
new, of desert locales and the people whose lives were mysteriously
touched there. As mentioned before, there are also numerous newspaper
clippings provided that offer further evidence of paranormal events in
the area stretching back many years.

Beckley offers a wonderful smorgasbord of several writers making their
individual contributions to a book that runs the gamut from the halcyon
early days of Giant Rock and the contactee movement to the dark side
manifested in the desert rat called Charlie Manson to the many ghostly
appearances of the unknown in the barren wastes called Death Valley and
the Mojave. By reading "Secrets of Death Valley - Mysteries and Haunts
of the Mojave Desert," one can become a kind of tourist of the region
without even breaking a sweat and shudder in fear in the privacy of
one's own home. But it might be better yet to actually travel there and
see for yourself.

[If you enjoyed this article, please visit Sean Casteel's website at www.seancasteel.com and read
some of his previous work.]

Here is a sample chapter from "Secrets of Death Valley: Mysteries and
Haunts of the Mojave Desert."

###

MOJAVE
BY
STARLIGHTAN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTERIES OF
THE DESERTBy Diane Tessman

It was a clear, cold night in California's Mojave Desert, and I had
never been closer to the stars. Nowhere else on Planet Earth do the
stars shine and twinkle so brightly. The sky stretched overhead like a
mystical black blanket with shining crystals everywhere.

Two friends and I had driven into the Joshua Tree National Monument to
go UFO hunting. The Monument is a national treasure in the magnificent
high desert. Incredible rock formations and bizarrely-shaped Joshua
trees dot the desert landscape. It is all very alien and yet so richly
of Earth.

The three of us sat huddled under a blanket for about an hour and then
decided to go home because of the cold. As we headed for the car, a
large, brilliant, white light raced across the sky. Just as we
struggled to tell each other it must have been a meteorite, it raced
back in the opposite direction, stopping overhead for a second. It
hovered just long enough for us to see smaller red, yellow, and blue
lights in a circular pattern while its brilliant light, which
illuminated the whole object, remained incandescent white.

Suddenly, it zoomed away, over the horizon from whence it came. We felt
we had just witnessed something utterly incredible and otherworldly. We
were speechless for a few moments, and then we couldn't stop talking
about what we had just seen. I will never forget that UFO sighting
which the Mojave Desert offered us that cold, starry night.

It is fact: The Mojave Desert never fails to provide us with chilling
phantoms, mysterious ghosts, and unexplained hauntings. It also offers
us unidentified star ships overhead and alien encounters under the
watchful eyes of monster rock formations. It tells us stories of Coyote
Man and the dreaded Chupacabra, and it even sings of "Hotel
California," where you can check out anytime you want but you can never
leave.

When I lived near the town of Joshua Tree, California, I felt I was
undergoing an intense two-year education in all things mysterious and
alien. I could feel the ghosts at Giant Rock, that gigantic, enigmatic
boulder a few miles from Landers, a village which suffered a
devastating earthquake in the early 1990s.

The ghostly phantoms at Giant Rock were mostly Native American in
"feel" and once I heard their flutes playing in the desert wind. Also,
there was the spirit of George van Tassel.

In the 1950s and 1960s, tens of thousands of people streamed into
Landers, blocking the highways for miles around. On they went to the
flying saucer Mecca of Giant Rock, gathering with George van
Tassel. At several of those gatherings, it is said that van
Tassel, at will, summoned his extraterrestrial friends, who appeared
overhead. Many people felt the alien contact and followed van Tassel's
enlightened, brilliant teachings.

In 1951, his friends from Venus astrally transported van Tassel aboard
their giant star ship and introduced him to "The Council of Seven
Lights." The Council told him to build a structure in that energized
area of California's high desert; they promised that this building
would extend human life and help humans become enlightened.

Built according to the precise directions and requirements of van
Tassel's alien friends, The Integratron still offers mind-blowing
acoustics and experiences of an almost psychedelic nature.

I recently reread George van Tassel's book, "The Council of Seven
Lights" and was amazed at the cosmic knowledge in its pages. It is a
book which reflects not only metaphysical wisdom but which also delves
into quantum physics within a spiritual format. Van Tassel was a
genuine contactee of great experience and wisdom.

In 1995 and1996, my daughter and I traveled almost daily to Giant Rock
from our home in the town of Joshua Tree. We wandered around it; we
meditated beside it. In the harsh sunlight of the desert day, the white
quartz which composes Giant Rock gleamed and glistened. We tried to
figure out how that huge boulder came to stand alone in the desert.
There were no other boulders like it anywhere around. On distant desert
hillsides, there were a few boulders which were much smaller than Giant
Rock. Did Giant Rock roll across the desert from one of those hillsides
miles away during an earthquake? Or did it come from the sky?

Giant Rock sometimes made us sad; there was ugly graffiti scrawled all
over it. Hundreds of dirt bikes and motorcycles had wrecked the
environment around it. There was also the infamous crack at the bottom
caused by bonfires. The crack seemed to lead to a cave beneath the
boulder. Rumor had it that a Nazi fugitive had hidden in this cave.

And so it was not surprising when, several years later, enigmatic Giant
Rock suddenly split in half. When it did so, I had already moved to
Iowa, but I remembered how sad the giant boulder itself seemed to be.
No one respected it or seemed to remember the universal light work
which had gone on around its domain. Giant Rock was a phenomenon of
Mother Nature and perhaps a gift from outer space, and all humans could
do now was to scrawl ugly words on it, scraping away the environment
with their noisy bikes. One theory says that the vibrations from
motorcycles helped split the mighty rock.

The tragedy of Giant Rock leads me to an insight on the mystical energy
of California's Mojave Desert: This unique quantum energy can be used
for enlightenment and goodness, or it can be used negatively.

The Manson Family's Spahn Ranch was in the Mojave.

It has long been joked that bodies murdered in Los Angeles end up in a
hole in the Mojave.

The ghost of a rock musician who is said to have overdosed in the 1970s
haunts the only motel in the town of Joshua Tree.

Yes, I do remember a feeling of panic sometimes in that hot desert sun,
a feeling that the spirits there were restless. Coming home one noon, I
saw a small child sitting under the Joshua tree across the road. The
child was crying softly. I rushed over, only to have the child
dematerialize.

My daughter witnessed a tribe of "restless spirits" one dark desert
night as they seemed to be picking leaves off of one of the trees in
our yard. She said they seemed confused and unhappy.

I researched various paranormal happenings for a video I did about
Giant Rock and the Mojave. I traveled into Joshua Tree Monument to find
the precise rock formation into which a teenage couple is said to have
disappeared. I had just enjoyed the film "Picnic at Hanging Rock,"
which is the account of young girls on a picnic in Australia who
disappeared without a trace into a mysterious rock formation.

The particular formation in Joshua Tree National Monument is actually
two formations, standing right next to each other. Between them is a
narrow "doorway" through which one can squeeze. Apparently the teenage
couple went through the doorway and were never seen again. Their
friends hurried through the same doorway minutes later, searching for
them. Was there a dimensional portal which opened precisely as they
went through, and which then closed again?

Mother Earth has given the Mojave Desert very unique and dynamic
energies which give rise to endless paranormal events as well as
beckoning visitors from other worlds and dimensions. There have been
more UFO sightings in the Mojave than any other area on Earth.

It is past time that a book be devoted to telling a few of The Mojave's
mysterious secrets. Enjoy.

[Diane Tessman's email address is dianetessman@hotmail.com Visit
her website at: earthchangepredictions.com
to view a wealth of spiritual information and to learn how Diane can
help you personally to contact your higher self. A subscription to
Diane's publication "The Change Times Quarterly" is available there as
well.

Diane also recommends her book "Earth Changes Bible," which is
available for purchase directly from her. Her regular mailing address
is: Diane Tessman, P.O. Box 352, St. Ansgar, Iowa, 50472. Below are
links to purchase some of Diane's books from
Amazon.com]

And now this: a possible super-secret, stealthy helicopter, unknown to
the wider world before one crashed during the assault.

Aviation specialists are picking apart pixel-by-pixel the dozen-or-so
photos of the copter that have appeared online. They’re assembling
digital mock-ups of the aircraft and comparing them to lost stealth
designs of the 1980s and ’90s. Speculation abounds, and so far no one
from the government is commenting. But depending on what the copter
turns out to be, it could shed new light on everything from the
abilities of U.S. commandos to the relationship between the United
States and Pakistan.

Opinions about the copter seem to fall into three basic camps. The
most-cautious observers believe the wreckage is from a conventional
chopper that got so badly mangled during the crash that it became
unrecognizable. In the center, there are those who think the helicopter
is an Army MH-60 Blackhawk tweaked to make it quieter and more
stealthy. On the fringes, the true believers are talking about a
brand-new, radar-evading helicopter design.

Considering the proliferation of bewildering photos from the crash
site, the conservative viewpoint seems unlikely. Equally, the notion of
a brand-new “black” helicopter seems far-fetched, especially
considering the Army’s long history of heavily modifying existing
rotorcraft for secret missions.

That leaves an upgraded, stealth-optimized MH-60 as the most likely
candidate — a conclusion that jibes with CIA director Leon Panetta’s
assertion Tuesday that the 25-man strike team was “carried in two
Blackhawk helicopters that went in.”

A story by ace reporter Sean Naylor in Army Times, published just
minutes after the initial version of this post, supports this
conclusion. Naylor quotes a retired Special Forces aviator saying the
special Blackhawk, modified by Lockheed Martin, has “hard edges, sort
of like an … F-117? stealth fighter from the same company.

According to a source who spoke to our own Spencer Ackerman, the
modifications might have taken place with the help of a mysterious Army
organization called the “Technology Applications Program Office,”
located at Fort Eustis, Virginia. The rumored nickname? Airwolf. That’s
right, like the cheesy ‘80 TV show.

Aside from one IT consultant who unwittingly live-tweeted the bin Laden
raid, reports from Pakistani sources of a crashed helicopter were the
first evidence that something was going down in Abbottabad. “According
to eyewitnesses, a low-flying helicopter crashed in a populated area,
and as a result two houses were engulfed in flames,” a Pakistani news
service reported.

One local news agency claimed the downed bird was Pakistani. It wasn’t
until several hours later that U.S. government sources clarified the
initial stories. “We lost one helicopter due to mechanical failure,” a
senior U.S. official said. “The aircraft was destroyed by the crew, and
the assault force and crew members boarded the remaining aircraft to
exit the compound.”

The official’s insistence — echoed later by Panetta — that there were
just two choppers involved in the 25-man raid raised some eyebrows.

According to Capt. Crispin Burke, a U.S. Army Blackhawk pilot and
Danger Room pal, two of the copters together can just barely squeeze in
25 people plus their weapons and other gear. But it’s inconceivable
that a single surviving Blackhawk could have transported all 25 members
of the assault team. Anyone who’s ridden in a Blackhawk knows that.

More than two choppers were present over bin Laden’s compound, despite
what the administration was saying. That was the first indication that,
as far as helicopters were concerned, something unusual was afoot.

Then came the photos. When the sun rose in Abbottabad, enterprising
photographers with the European Press Agency and the Associated Press
snapped pics showing the remains of the destroyed U.S. helicopter. The
snapshots apparently depicted features not found on standard
Blackhawks. Late on May 3, the first headlines appeared announcing the
existence of a previously unknown “stealth helicopter.”

The Invisible Rotorcraft

So what was it that betrayed the downed choppers’ secret roots? Nearly
rivetless skin, odd control surfaces, a shrouded tail rotor and special
infrared-absorbing paint, for starters.

“Note how the UH-60 has a large stabilator [horizontal fin] with plenty
of rivets,” Burke commented. “The one in the crash is much smaller,
very smooth and swept back. Strange.”

A “round shield-like affair over the tail-rotor hub is an airflow
diverter, designed to eliminate the turbulence around the rotor hub,
making it more efficient,” wrote “Bill” from the milblog Arrgggh!. The
diverter “probably has a secondary effect of reducing the noise of the
tail rotor by making it directional.”

A very clear photo of that “shield” was given to Reuters, and appear at
the top of this story.)

“The aircraft skin is interesting,” Bill continued. “It’s perfectly
smooth, and I have a nagging hunch it’s something I’ve seen before,
back in the late ’80s” — on an experimental OH-6 “Loach” scout chopper.

To him, the paint on the wrecked chopper appeared to be a “variation on
the Invisible Loach — a light-emitting appliqué film which,
coupled to directional cameras, will exactly reproduce the light and
color patterns on the opposite side of the aircraft. Think of the
aircraft as being made of glass.”

The stealthy copter also has a “special coating” on its windshield to
scatter radar waves, Naylor asserts in his Army Times story.

Combined, the details imply a helicopter design that is more stealthy
than standard choppers in every sense of the term. “Such a helicopter
would not be invisible or silent, but would be harder to detect and
track using an X-band or Ku-band radar, and quieter than a conventional
helicopter,” said Carlo Kopp, joint head of the Air Power Australia
think tank.

Based on the evidence, and the assumption that these improvements were
applied to a basic Blackhawk airframe, aviation artist Ugo Crisponi
produced a quick rendering of what the secret chopper might look like.
The components depicted in the new Guardian photos — plus Naylor’s
detailed description — match Crisponi’s concept pretty closely.

Historians and analysts were quick to point out precedents for the
elusive bird. The obvious example is the Army’s überexpensive
RAH-66 Comanche, killed off in 2004. That bird, Copp said, featured
“shrouded rotor heads and unspecified absorbent materials” just like
the mystery craft from Abbottabad.

John Pike, from Virginia-based Globalsecurity.org, highlighted the
“MH-X,” a low-signature transport chopper project from the 1980s that
was reportedly tested alongside the F-117 stealth fighter and B-2
stealth bomber.

Based on Naylor’s reporting, it appears that a handful of special
Blackhawks — probably no more than four — indeed originated from the
MH-X program, but plans for a large, permanent unit to fly these birds
was cancelled “within the last two years.” Instead, Army Special Forces
aviators took turns training on the stealth copters in Nevada, possibly
at the secretive base known by some as “Area 51.”

Stealth Copter, Clear Politics

Though the evidence is mounting that the newly revealed black chopper
is more angular Blackhawk derived from the MH-X program, it could be a
while before we know for sure. The Pentagon is slow to reveal its
most-advanced aircraft.

Nearly two years have passed since the Air Force admitted it possessed
a stealthy spy drone, the RQ-170 — and we still don’t have an official
photo of that bird. Moreover, statements from Washington seem intended
to obscure the issue of the mystery chopper.

In any event, the implications are potentially enormous. For one, the
existence of a stealthy helicopter means we must revise upward our
assessment of U.S. Special Operations Forces’ ability to strike fast
and unseen, all over the world.

Second, we should take with a grain of salt all the recent
hand-wringing over the supposed decay in the American military
rotorcraft industry. If we really have already fielded the world’s
first radar-evading helicopter, there’s less reason to worry that the
United States might have lost its chopper-making skills.

Third, the fact that the Pentagon was willing to risk its most secret
whirlybird “shows the importance of the mission in the eyes of U.S.
commanders,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, who was, as
usual, among the first to report on the new chopper.

Finally, the black helicopter sheds new light on the military’s
suspicion of possible Pakistani interference in the bin Laden raid. In
his speech announcing bin Laden’s death, President Barack Obama heaped
praise on Pakistan. “Our counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan
helped lead us to bin Laden.”

But Panetta later admitted that the United States had deliberately not
told Pakistan of the impending raid. That “could jeopardize the
mission,” because Pakistan “might alert the targets.”

Moreover, Joint Special Operations Command wasn’t comfortable simply
arriving on the scene in its decidedly radar-visible Army Chinooks or
Air Force MV-22 tilt-rotors. That would’ve meant essentially barging
into Pakistani airspace, and hoping that Islamabad would refrain from
targeting the attackers with surface-to-air-missiles.

No, JSOC felt it was necessary to stay off Pakistani radar displays for
as long as possible. The unavoidable inference is that the commandos
feared Pakistan might actually shoot at unannounced American choppers.
That revelation, more so than the mere existence of a stealthy
helicopter, could be the most compelling news of all.

Without doubt, one of the strangest aspects of cryptozoology, is it’s
tie-in with the Crop Circle mystery. Although it’s a little-known
aspect of both phenomena, more than a few accounts exist of strange
creatures seen in and around Crop Circles. From Matthew Williams – the
only British man ever arrested, charged and convicted for making a Crop
Circle - come several such accounts.

It transpires that, unsurprisingly for someone who has spent years
deeply immersed within the Crop Circle controversy, Matthew is a
veritable fountain of knowledge with respect to tales of weird
creatures either having been seen in, or at least in the direct
vicinity of, complex Crop Circle formations. One such case is truly
strange.

Matthew advised me that the story in question concerned a man who had
felt curiously compelled to drive late at night to a certain field in
Wiltshire many years ago. On doing so, he parked his car and duly, and
carefully, began his walk into the depths of the crop. Suddenly, out of
nowhere, a large, black, human-like figure appeared in the air over the
field.

“It reminded me a little bit of the Mothman sightings when I heard this
story,” said Matthew, not without a high degree of justification.
Matthew continued that the source of the story could only stand and
stare in awe, while suddenly gaining the distinct impression that the
hovering entity was the source of at least some of the Crop Circle
formations that were appearing in Wiltshire.

At that precise moment, a simple Crop Circle suddenly appeared on the
ground immediately below the black figure – after which it vanished
from the skies and the man was left utterly alone in the field, and
with no real option other than to make his shocked way back to his
vehicle and drive home, baffled and bewildered by both the weird,
aerial entity and what it was that had directed him to the field.

And still Matthew’s accounts were not over: “There was one time, I’d
rather not say when or where exactly, as I could get into trouble for
admitting I trespassed on the farmer’s land and made the crop circle
formation. Plus, I had a friend named Paul helping me with this one. We
were making this circle when we noticed these three bright lights –
small balls of lights coming towards the field. We watched them; we
were fascinated. But they split up and each of them went to a corner of
the field – and which only left one corner for us to leave by without
getting too close to these things.

“That was a bit unsettling. We didn’t know what these balls were; so we
raced out of the open corner of the field. We looked back as we ran and
could see the balls heading towards us: gliding very gracefully just
above the top of the crop. It was like they were on a railway track,
just moving very smoothly, but it left us sort of disturbed too: like
they were almost ghostly and alive.”

The story was far from over, as Matthew notes: “Well, I went to get the
car, and told Paul to wait in the bushes at the edge of the road so he
wouldn’t be seen. The last thing I wanted was for him to get arrested
if the police happened to drive past. But by the time I had got the car
and got back to Paul, he was walking up the middle of the road with all
his Crop Circle equipment in full view. I pulled up, wound the window
down and shouted at him: ‘What the hell are you doing? If people see
you carrying your [crop circle-making] equipment, we’ll get arrested.’

“Paul looked scared stiff and said: ‘If they had arrested me, I’d have
gone with them, just to get me out of there.’ I asked him what he
meant, and Paul said that while I was getting the car he had heard
these strange, animal-like screaming noises coming from inside the
field and he had just charged out of there and onto the road. We never
found out what it was though.”

And Matthew Williams is not alone in commenting on such matters: in the
summer of 2007, I spoke with Marcus Matthews, a researcher of
mysterious big-cats in Britain, who told me that he was then currently
investigating a case involving a person who had seen a “huge black cat”
sitting inside the confines of a Wiltshire Crop Circle.

So, how do we define and explain such rogue reports as these? The
answer, admittedly, right now is that we can’t. All I can say is this:
if you ever find yourself deep in the heart of a huge Crop Circle, then
keep a careful watch. There may be something monstrous keeping its eyes
on you, getting ready to pounce…

Nick Redfern is the author of many books, including the newly-published
Space Girl on Spaghetti Junction.

It's been a severe start to the
spring season in the United States. Tornadoes have ravaged the
southeastern US, flooding threatens much of the Midwest, and wildfires
are scorching Texas. But according to researchers, a confluence of
seasonal oscillations in weather patterns, rather than climate change,
is to blame. And growing populations mean that grim casualty figures
from such events may become the norm.

"I don't think there's any way of proving climate change is responsible
for the weather patterns this week and week before," says meteorologist
Howard Bluestein, of the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Tornadoes, floods and fires occur every year in America, and the
outbreak of each this year is readily explained by short-term factors.

Texas has suffered drought since late 2010, producing the driest March
on record. Ground temperatures in March and April were higher than
usual, shrivelling the already rain-starved vegetation. The low
humidity, heat, and high winds built a perfect tinder box for
wildfires, which have so far burned more than 1.4 million acres in
around 800 separate blazes across Texas .

Floods are largely explained by a combination of heavy rains and
melting snow. Coupled with recent severe rainstorms, the snowmelt from
a very white winter of 2010-2011 has pushed waters at the confluence of
the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to record levels, threatening
communities in Missouri and Illinois. Elsewhere, the waters have
already overrun their levees and inundated nearby towns.

The conditions that create tornadoes are more complex and less well
understood. They need the hot, humid air that fuels a thunderstorm and
a strong jet stream, although scientists are not sure why this
combination only sometimes produces twisters.

Around two weeks ago, a huge mass of humid air blew up from the Gulf of
Mexico and draped itself upon the Southeastern United States. When the
colder jet stream – narrow, swift moving and cold – began to churn the
sultry air, a huge system of thunderstorms arose, along with hundreds
of twisters. Between between April 14 and 16, 155 confirmed tornadoes
struck, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
estimates another 362 twisters touched down between April 25 and 28,
leaving a swath of destruction across the southern US. In all, more
than 377 people have died and some are still missing.

Climate change cannot be directly blamed for such outbreaks. And even
as scientists' climate models have improved, the question of whether
increasing global temperatures will change the frequency and severity
of dangerous weather in the future remains open.

Rising temperatures mean more of the warm soupy air from which
thunderstorms are formed. At the same time, however, global warming
could weaken the temperature difference between the equator and the
poles, a gradient that generates the jet stream in the first place.

One possible outcome of these opposing forces is that a warmer world
will produce more run of the mill thunderstorms, but fewer tornadoes.
In a 2007 study, however, NASA climate scientist Anthony Del Genio NASA
modeled a hypothetical future climate with twice the then-current
carbon dioxide levels and surface temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit
(2.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than typical. He concluded that despite a
weakened jet stream, violent twister-generating thunderstorms will
actually occur more frequently in a warmer world because of collisions
between strong updrafts and speedy horizontal winds.

For now, there simply isn't enough data to say whether climate change
makes severe thunderstorms and tornadoes more or less likely. But 2011
could prove to be the beginning of a trend.

"We can't say much about one particular outbreak, but if this if this
is still happening ten years in a row, we will definitely be wondering
what is going on," says Joshua Wurman, president of the Center for
Severe Weather Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Either way, the breathtaking loss of life witnessed in the last month
may become harder and harder to avoid. The April 2011 tornado outbreaks
have killed far more people than anything in the past few decades,
despite the fact that warning systems are better than ever.

One explanation is population density: "There are simply more people in
harm's way than there used to be," says Bluestein. "Inevitably some
people just aren't going to get out of the way. It's a sad horrible
thing that over 300 people lost their lives in the last outbreak, but
if we didn't have the kind of warning systems we have now, thousands of
people would have been killed."
Numbers game

NOAA currently estimates over 600 tornadoes touched down in the US in
April. If the number stands, it would be a record for a month that is
usually quieter than May, the most active month of the year for
twisters. But comparing today's statistics to the historical record can
be tricky - the number of people reporting tornadoes has increased
dramatically over time, so older records may have missed many twisters.

"Today people report even the smallest tornadoes," says Bluestein.
"With our cell phones and wireless internet it's as if no tree falling
in the forest gets left unseen."

"2011 is certainly getting off to a roaring start for severe weather,"
says Del Genio. It's very interesting that we have had huge outbreak of
tornadoes this April, but remember that the rest of year could turn out
to be very calm – we just don't know yet."

A new study sug­gests the claimed con­nec­tion be­tween
scar­let rain and ti­ny ce­les­tial vis­i­tors
may be con­sist­ent with his­tor­i­cal
ac­counts link­ing col­ored rain to me­te­or
pass­ings. These would seem to ech­o the In­dia case, in
which or­gan­isms are pro­posed to have fall­en out of
a break­ing me­te­or.

“Some of these [past] ac­counts may have been
ex­ag­ger­at­ed,” cau­tioned the new stu­dy’s
au­thor in re­port­ing his find­ings, adding that
con­si­der­able prob­lems also dog the alien-cell
pro­po­sal.

Yet the his­tor­i­cal anal­y­sis, he
con­clud­ed, shows the ques­tion is “much more com­plex
than one might have ex­pect­ed” and “should be
in­ves­t­i­gated with eve­ry
sci­en­tif­ic re­source” avail­a­ble.

The stu­dy, by doc­tor­al stu­dent Pat­rick
Mc­Caf­ferty of Queen’s Un­ivers­ity Bel­fast, is
pub­lished in the ad­vance on­line edi­tion of the
In­terna­t­ional Jour­nal of
As­tro­bi­ol­o­gy.

Mc­Caf­ferty an­a­lyzed, as he wrote, “80 ac­counts
of red rain, an­oth­er 20 ref­er­ences to lakes and
riv­ers turn­ing blood-red, and 68 ex­am­ples of
oth­er phe­nom­e­na such as col­oured rain, black
rain, milk, bricks, or hon­ey fall­ing from the sky.”

Six­ty of these events, or 36 per­cent, “were linked to
me­te­oritic or com­et­ary ac­ti­vity,” he went
on. But not al­ways strongly. Some­times, “the fall of red rain
seems to have oc­curred af­ter an air­burst,” as from a
me­te­or ex­plod­ing in air; oth­er times the odd
rain­fall “is merely recorded in the same year as a stone-fall or
the ap­pear­ance of a comet.”

The phe­nom­e­na were recorded in times and places as
var­ied as Clas­si­cal Rome, me­di­e­val
Ire­land, Nor­man Brit­ain and 19th cen­tu­ry
Cal­i­for­nia, not­ed Mc­Caf­ferty, who has a
mas­ter’s de­gree in ar­chae­o­lo­gy and
stud­ies Irish myth and as­tron­o­my.
Mc­Caf­ferty added that ta­les sug­ges­tive of red
rain-me­te­or links al­so crop up in myth.

With wit­nesses to past events all long dead, Mc­Caf­ferty
wrote that probably no his­tor­i­cal anal­y­sis
will ev­er set­tle the de­bate over the 2001 rain­falls
in In­dia.

Re­search claim­ing to con­nect these rains to
ex­tra­ter­res­tri­al life pro­voked
dis­be­lief when they were first re­ported wide­ly, in
World Sci­ence. “I real­ly, really don’t think they are from a
me­te­or!” wrote Har­vard Un­ivers­ity
bi­ol­o­gist Jack Szos­tak, re­fer­ring to
cell-like par­t­i­cles that had been re­ported to
per­me­ate the col­lect­ed rain­wa­ter.

The cu­ri­ous events be­gan on July 25, 2001, when
res­i­dents of Ker­a­la, a re­gion in
south­west­ern In­dia, started see­ing scar­let
rain in some ar­eas. It per­sisted on-and-off for some weeks,
even two months. Sci­en­tists could­n’t iden­ti­fy
the cell-like specks that gave the wa­ter its scar­let hue.
Specula­t­ion of pos­si­ble
ex­tra­ter­res­tri­al ori­gins be­gan.

Two In­di­an sci­en­tists lat­er pub­lished a
chem­i­cal and bi­o­log­i­cal
anal­y­sis sug­gest­ing, they said, that the specks
might in­deed be lit­tle aliens. They “have much
si­m­i­lar­ity with bi­o­log­i­cal
cells” but with­out DNA, wrote the re­search­ers,
God­frey Lou­is and A. San­thosh Ku­mar of
In­di­a’s Ma­hat­ma Gan­dhi Un­ivers­ity.
“Are these cell-like par­t­i­cles a kind of
al­ter­nate life from space?”

They cit­ed news­pa­per re­ports that a
me­te­or broke up in the at­mos­phere hours be­fore
the red rain. Lou­is and Ku­mar’s re­search pa­per
ap­peared in the April 4, 2006 on­line edi­tion of the
re­search jour­nal As­t­ro­phys­ics and Space
Sci­ence. In pre­vi­ous, un­pub­lished pa­pers,
the pa­ir al­so claimed the par­t­i­cles could
re­pro­duce in ex­treme heat.

Some re­search­ers, in­clud­ing Chan­dra
Wick­ra­mas­inghe, di­rec­tor of the Cen­tre
for As­tro­bi­ol­o­gy at Car­diff
Un­ivers­ity, U.K., have said that Lou­is and Ku­mar’s
idea may well be cor­rect. He and oth­er sup­port­ers
point­ed to the con­sist­en­cy of the alien-cell
hy­poth­e­sis with the pop­u­lar “pansper­mia”
the­o­ry, which holds that me­te­ors and comets might
have seeded life through­out many plan­ets.

But oth­er sci­en­tists have cit­ed prob­lems with
the the­o­ry, in­clud­ing a lack of clear
ev­i­dence for any me­te­or, and the knot­ty
ques­tion of how mi­cro-aliens might have stayed aloft for
months af­ter burst­ing out of a me­te­or.

“With­out con­clu­sive ev­i­dence such as
me­te­oritic dust mixed with red rain, it is
dif­fi­cult to say an­ything spe­cif­ic about
Ker­a­la’s red rain,” Mc­Caf­ferty wrote. But in
his­to­ry, he added, “there ap­pears to be a strong link
be­tween some re­ported events [like it] and
me­te­oritic ac­ti­vity. The re­ported airburst
just be­fore the fall of red rain in Ker­a­la fits a
fa­mil­iar pat­tern, and can­not be dis­missed so
easily as an un­re­lat­ed co­in­ci­dence.”

Rumors about the “flying beings” have been circulating around the globe
from time immemorial. Almost every nation’s fairy tales have a
description of a winged creature that looks like a human being. It was
not until a few years ago that researchers in different parts of the
world began trying harder to crack the mystery of the flying creatures.

American researchers became the first ones to show interest in the
“flying humanoids.” The U.S. Air Force archives keep a report on an UFO
filed by one William S. Lamb from Nebraska. Mr. Lamb was on a hunting
trip near Hewbell at 5 a.m. on February 22, 1922. Suddenly he heard a
strange high-pitched sound coming from above. Mr. Lamb looked up and
saw a big dark object flying in the sky. Then it landed just like an
airplane and started walking across the snow. The stranger was at least
eight foot high. Mr. Lamb tried to follow the footprints but exhausted
himself trudging through the deep snow.

The archives also keep similar records about several amazing encounters
that took place near the small town of Point Pleasant.

On November 15, 1966, two young family couples, the residents of Point
Pleasant, went astray while riding on a car to the country to see their
friends. Dusk was falling as they were driving past an old mill. All of
a sudden one of the women began staring open-mouthed at two red circles
that shone brightly in the dark. The circles were about two inches in
diameter and seemed to be hanging in the air. Then they started moving
towards the car. The driver and passengers finally saw the eyes of a
huge living being.

Its frame resembled that of a human but it looked a lot taller, up to
six and a half to seven foot. And it had a pair of wings folded behind
the back.

The big red eyes seemed to be hypnotizing the riders, everybody was
sitting still for a minute or two unable to look away. Then somebody
cried out: “Let’s get out of here!” and the driver stepped on it. The
car was crossing the top of a hill as the passengers saw another winged
creature hovering above the trees. It spread the wings and flew
straight up the sky as the car was rolling at a hundred miles per hour.

Thomas Uri, a young salesman from Point Pleasant, was driving his car
on early morning of November 25, 1966. Thomas then saw a tall humanlike
form standing in the field nearby. Suddenly, the creature unfolded the
wings and rose vertically into the sky like a helicopter. It was flying
above the car for a while, never falling behind though the car was
running at 75 miles per hour.

It is quite noteworthy that an indescribable fear filled all the
residents of Point Pleasant who saw the flying monster. A similar
flying creature was seen about the same time in the vicinity of the
town of New Haven in West Virginia.

Connie, a 18-year-old resident of the above town, was driving back home
after a Sunday church service. She was driving past a derelict golf
course when a big grey figure, at least seven foot high, emerged at the
roadside. However, it was not the height of the creature that caught
Connie’s eye. The girl was virtually mesmerized by the two big eyes,
they were red and shone brightly. All of a sudden the creature spread
its wings and it lifted up slowly, without making a sound. The flying
thing did not flap the wings during the flight.

Four lads were walking back home from a dance near Standling Park in
Kent, the United Kingdom, on November 16, 1963. They suddenly heard a
crackling of the branches and along came a black behemoth. It had a
pair of bat-like wings.

A similar creature was seen in the village of Nagorye, in central
Russia, in the September of 1979. It was dusk when a student took a
girl on a date in the field. The sun was sinking fast. The student was
called Igor Kuleshov. He was in the middle of the date when he saw some
dark object flying slowly above the ground at about 30 meters. Igor
went speechless as the object moved closer and took shape of a human
wearing some kind of a shining armor like a knight of the Middle Ages.
There was a pale halo around the flying man. He flew right above the
astounded couple and vanished in the direction of a forest. They could
also hear something resembling a rustle of the leaves on the wind.

U.S. researchers put forth two theories as to the origins of the
“flying beings.” According to the first theory, the military conducted
a series of experiments involving residents of the areas near secret
military installations. The experiments had to do with a mind-control
research program, which allegedly involved the use of electronic
signals to produce same-kind hallucinations. The second theory
maintains that the winged creatures do exist. Their origins remain
pretty murky and unearthly, though. The creatures turn up in our
dimension once in a while only to disappear without a trace in another
dimension.